Lifting and moving immobilized hospital patients has long presented problems to nurses and hospital staff attendants. The problem is acute when the patient is heavy or where his condition is so extreme as to eliminate the possibility of the patient's assistance or muscular control. Thus, the turning of patients in intensive care units to avoid bed sores or the lifting of immobilized patients upon a bed pan requires strenuous exertion by one or more hospital staff attendants. Moreover, this strenuous exertion is from alongside the hospital bed -- a position which further aggravates the problem in that it is most awkward to maximize one's lifting force against a patient positioned transversely away from the staff attendant.
Numerous inflatable devices for turning or lifting a patient have been suggested by the prior art. Such devices involve an inflatable tube adapted to be first placed under the patient and then inflated by a hand pump, or other source of compressed air, to raise the patient. Many of these prior devices are disclosed in the following patents:
______________________________________ 1,981,666 Ridley 3,331,087 Barlow 2,618,269 Baum et al. 3,332,415 Erickson 3,026,541 Murat 3,526,908 Davis 3,178,732 Stibitz 3,775,781 Bruno et al 3,242,923 Jacoby, Sr. 3,795,021 Moniot 3,245,405 Gardner 3,895,403 Davis ______________________________________
Such art includes inflatable units which may be complex in manufacture or difficult to control. Such a control problem may result from the fact that the inflatable device first expands in areas displaced from the weight of the patient -- in the area of least resistance. Such expansion can further result in undesired turning of the patient or in an expansion of the device in an area which makes uniform lifting impossible.